Breathing to Lose Weight

Lose weight by breathing…is this real? The simple answer is yes. You burn calories every time your heart beats, every time you stand up, and every time you breathe in and out.

Check out this article by the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) for an awesome video explaining what how this works and for the more scientific details.

Unfortunately, you will not make really any significant weight loss by just adding more breathing to your daily routine. Breathing more or faster will only make you hyperventilate and probably pass out. In this case your body doesn’t have anything it needs to get rid of. It’s activity or exercise that actually kick starts the whole breathing off fat process.

Exercise causes molecular breakdown of fat and other substances to fuel the body to move. With exercise the body has broken apart molecules to get the energy it needs to do the work. What’s left in most cases is carbon which the body now needs to get rid of. The easy solution, quite simply, is breathing it out as carbon dioxide.

With that being said the more efficiently you breathe, the more exercise and work you’ll be able to do, meaning the better fat “blow off” you can have. If you haven’t already, check out if you’re breathing correctly and a simple exercise that can help you develop a more efficient breathing pattern.